My guest this week, Carly, and I talk about the postpartum period. There are so many changes that occur during that "4th trimester". As you approach the end of your maternity leave you might find yourself excited to return to work but also guilty about having to leave your child. You've just gotten into a rhythm of being a mom and then you get thrown back into work and trying to figure out how to merge that new mom life with your work life can be hard! Especially when you have to navigate a new normal at work in the form of pumping - how to pump, where to pump, and when to pump. Can you ever really figure it out?

As a primate keeper, Carly has some amazing experiences training gorillas for maternal behaviors and she and I also talk a bit about primate behaviors and whether or not great apes can sense pregnancy changes in pregnant women.

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As a working professional, when you suddenly step into the world of motherhood, it can sometimes feel as if you now have two identities. Motherhood, and in the case of most of this podcast's guests, zookeeper. My guest this week, Kristine Duplisea, and I talk a little bit about this. We also talk about how maternity leave can feel so isolating, especially if you don't have a "village" to help you out. We put so much emphasis on learning how to be a mom prior to having a baby that after their arrival it often seems that we forget about the immense amount of support that new parents, especially mothers, need.

Returning to work has its own set of challenges to navigate, especially if you are a pumping mom. Kristine and I talk about navigating finding the time to pump at work and trying to find the balance between the bigger picture of needing to provide food for your child and the responsibilities of your job, in that very moment, that need to be finished before you can take time to pump.

Finally, Kristine and I also talk about the self-inflicted guilt that comes with taking your child to daycare on your day off. Time alone is so precious to some, but it sometimes comes with a side of guilt as we feel bad for sending our child to daycare when we know we are capable of taking care of them at home.

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Animal care professionals work so hard to get into the zoo field. Internships, commutes, low pay, time spent away from family and friends - all this because they love what they do and oftentimes consider it their passion. They can’t imagine doing anything else. My guest this week, Kristen, and I talk about how it feels to be working your dream job but also feel like you hate leaving your kid to do it.

Kristen has definitely worked hard to make it work throughout her career. From being a mom during her internship to living far from where she worked, she has recently considered whether her dream is the best for her family; and thus, she recently decided to step away from being a zookeeper for a bit.

We talk about the emotions that come from leaving something you worked so hard to obtain. When around her amazing coworkers and animals, she loved her job, but as soon as she stepped away from the good things at work she would think about everything she was missing at home. Her and I talk about feeling like she was “being split in half”. A feeling I can also relate to as a working mom - and one that we have discussed on the podcast before because so many women also feel like they have two different identities; zookeeper and mom.

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Can you train your kids the same way you train zoo animals? My guest this week, Sarah Kirkman, is a zookeeper at the Columbus Zoo and mom to two small children and she has a great story about putting her animal training skills to use!

How zookeeper skills transfer over to one’s mom life is not the only thing Sarah and I talk about though. We talk a little about whether it is harder to go back to work after the first kid or after the second. Everyone has different experiences and there are definitely things you are already prepared for with the second kid but going back to work after the first is a whole new world!

Sarah has great advice to find the other moms where you work. It can feel so good to connect with other professionals that understand what you are going through and who just “get it” about all the weird and stressful things in motherhood. It just makes you feel less alone!

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My guest this week, Lindsay Ireland, is a penguin keeper at the Detroit Zoo. We talk a bit about being pregnant while working with penguins and then dive into how as a new mom it can be so hard not to compare oneself to other mothers and your baby to other babies. As a new mom, Lindsay found herself researching everything but realized that having her mom nearby helped keep her grounded and confident that she didn’t have to do the same as everyone else.

We also talk about the finances of daycare vs. deciding to stay home because all of your paycheck will just go to pay for daycare. Most in the zookeeping profession would feel it’s “worth it” to have their paycheck go entirely to daycare because they love their job so much. Lindsay and I talk about why zookeepers tend to embrace the persona of zookeeper wholeheartedly and see it as an identity.

Finally, we talk a bit about schedules (hers is a rotating off schedule) and how that impacts family life and scheduling family vacations and events. It can be hard for extended family to understand how your schedule works and why you can’t make plans very far in advance.

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Join me this week for something a little bit different - Zoological Podcast Summit 2024!
Myself, Jon Rossi from the Rossifari Podcast and Chris Jenkins from the NEI TEC Talk Podcast spend some time talking about hosting zoo-focused podcasts. Each one of us fills a very niche role within the zoo podcast world. Jon interviews and highlights amazing zoo, aquarium, and conservation professionals while Chris co-hosts the NEI TEC Talk Podcast which focuses on animal behavior and training (his co-host Ari Bailey was on an episode of Mothering Wildlife, episode 18!). We talk about how the idea for our podcasts came to be, what goes in to making them, what it's like to meet listeners in real life, and a variety of other "podcasty" things. It's a long one but interesting! And it was a ton of fun to get to chat with these two!

Make sure you subscribe to and support their podcasts as well! Both Rossifari and NEI TEC Talk can be found wherever you listen to Mothering Wildlife!

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My guest this week, Courtney Janney, and I spent so much time talking about women in leadership and how having children changed her professional priorities. When her first daughter was born, her new attitude about work/life balance pervaded her team and she quit playing the competitive game with her coworkers which allowed her and her teammates to start trusting each other more. She feels like this made management see her more as a leader and it helped pave her way to leadership opportunities.

We also talk a lot about adjusting to being back at work after parental leave; she always advises new moms to give themselves time to adjust to being back at work because a new normal will take a while to click into place - for her it took about the same amount of time that she was out on leave to be back at work before she started feeling like her new normal was set. This also meant that she had to decide that she wasn't going to feel guilty about leaving her daughter at daycare.

Courtney is a big advocate for finding the facility and culture that is right for you. If your needs aren't being met, then advocate for yourself and either look for a facility that can provide or attempt to create the changes yourself.

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Often, we feel like we are juggling so many things in life - kids, work, to-do lists, projects, etc. My guest this week, Dr. Lizzy Arnett-Chinn, has a great way of looking at how to prioritize all the things she is juggling. It's simple, really - just don't drop the glass balls.

She once heard this phrase about "glass balls" and ever since it has really stuck with her and helped her to figure out how to spend her time and split her emotional resources. One day your "glass ball" might be a sick kid and the next it might be an animal at work. They are always changing, and we are always juggling, but learning how to prioritize can make a world of difference!

Lizzy and I also talk about her move across country as she recently started a new zoo vet job. Anyone who has had to start a new job with children in tow can relate to the struggles of enrolling kids in school and finding daycares!

Lastly, we talk about the changing views towards burnout and compassion fatigue in the zoo and veterinary fields. Veterinarians are no strangers to both burnout and compassion fatigue and Lizzy has had to recognize when she is suffering from both and work to make changes to help herself overcome them.

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